Michael Elbert Young, 42, also absconded from the halfway house, on April 5. Young scaled a fence topped with barbed wire and removed his GPS ankle monitor. He was later arrested by Austin police as he robbed and choked a woman on April 17.

"At my request, they are going to send a TDCJ team to review their security procedures, to grade their papers and see how they dropped the ball, if they did," said Whitmire, adding that Brian Collier, the assistant executive director of the state agency, had agreed to set up the inspection visit.

Whitmire, who co-chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said Elkins and Young are among hundreds of former Texas prison inmates placed in halfway houses under a civil commitment program reserved for the state's most violent sexual predators. The indefinite civil commitment - ordered by judges - provides treatment and monitoring outside a prison setting. Those who violate rules are returned to prison.

Pablo Paez, vice president for corporate relations at the GEO Group Inc. in Boca Raton, Fla., did not return calls for an interview or respond to questions about Elkins, security or the number of offenders who have escaped. He would only provide general information about those placed at the facility, and noted that permission to leave is decided by state officials.

>The 412-bed building houses not only sexual predators placed there under a civil court commitment, but also prison parolees, state officials said.

Elkins was allowed to leave the facility each day to receive treatment in the community and was required to spend the night at the facility. After he was released from a Texas prison in March 2011, he was ordered by a judge to the half-way house, officials confirmed.

Court records show Elkins has prior convictions on charges of kidnapping, aggravated battery, aggravated sexual assault and sexual battery. He has also been arrested for indecent liberties with a child, forcible rape, aggravated rape and aggravated kidnapping.

He is not the only violent sex offender to abscond from a state-funded halfway house recently.

DPS agents are also searching for James Anthony Rubio, 55, who cut off his ankle monitor Sept. 30 and slipped away from a half-way house outside of Austin. Rubio has served time for sexually assaulting four women and girls, including a 14-year-old.

Whitmire, who co-authored legislation setting up the civil commitment program, said it has proved to be a successful way to establish long-term monitoring of sex offenders who have competed their prison sentences.

"We're going to review the whole process and one (absconder) is too many, but the program has been a success," Whitmire said. "It's accomplished its intended mission to put just overwhelming supervision on these guys. There's nothing lax about this, and they're on it forever. It's designed to send them back to prison.''